


The Last Stone

by phoenixnz



Series: Nightwing Chronicles [11]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 00:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12544888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixnz/pseuds/phoenixnz
Summary: Clark heads to China for the last stone, then reunites them. Jor-El tells him he must go for training.





	The Last Stone

Clark wasn’t happy about having to go to China on his own, but Bruce had told him he couldn’t spare the time to go with him and Lex wasn’t able to get away. 

Things had been so much easier in Princeton. He knew it was one of the pitfalls of growing up but that didn’t mean he had to like it. 

He felt bad for Lex who had basically had to cut himself off from them or else their whole plan to get all the dirt on Lionel would fall apart. Clark hated the fact that they were so close in Smallville, yet they still couldn’t spend any time together. Or at least, they couldn’t be seen spending any time together. The one time they had met at The Beanery, someone working for Lionel must have seen them as there had been hell to pay when Lex had seen his father a couple of days later. 

Bruce was a little more philosophical about the problem, saying it wouldn’t be forever. With Morgan Edge’s confession, even though it was technically under duress, the FBI had begun to investigate Luthorcorp, albeit covertly. From what Bruce’s friend Jim Gordon had told him, a federal agent had begun working on the inside. While they hadn’t come up with the goods yet, it was just a matter of time before the agent found the evidence. 

Meanwhile, Bruce had offered Clark the Wayne Enterprises jet for his trip to China. Clark’s parents weren’t exactly happy at the trip but since Clark wasn’t in school and wasn’t working they couldn’t really object. 

Clark flew to Shanghai and left the airport wondering what he was supposed to do next. Bruce’s instructions had been a little vague. All he was told was to find a red rooster. He wandered the city streets, trying to decipher the scribbled directions on the piece of paper, when he saw it. A sign for a small restaurant. He didn’t know Mandarin, or Cantonese, or whatever the language on the sign was but the rooster was unmistakeable. 

“Mr Kent.”

He frowned at the pretty dark-haired woman. She was probably about ten years older than him. She spoke without accent. Or rather, she spoke with an American accent. 

“How did you know?” he asked. 

“Your confusion was rather obvious,” she said with a grin. “I’m guessing Bruce’s directions were a little hard to follow.”

“You’re telling me. How do you know Bruce?”

“I taught in the States. I’m Lin, by the way.”

“You can call me Clark,” he said, hesitating before shaking her hand. Bruce had explained some cultures didn’t use the same greeting, but Lin didn’t seem too concerned. 

“You said you taught in the States?” he asked. 

“Oh, sorry, yes, I taught a class at Princeton. That’s how I met Bruce. I’m guessing he wasn’t forthcoming with that information.”

“Not really, no. But that’s Bruce. He doesn’t say much but when he does …”

“You should pay attention,” Lin finished. “Anyway, he contacted me about this project you’re working on. Something to do with strange symbols? Anyway, my research led me to a temple about twenty miles from the city.”

“A temple?” he asked, wondering how the stone could still remain hidden. He still didn’t understand how the stones could have been placed in various artifacts but he doubted he was ever going to find out the answers. 

Lin explained there had been a cultural revolution and the government of the time had destroyed many of the ancient temples. For some reason, the one she was taking him to had been left alone. 

She surmised that the reason was because it had been shrouded in superstition. Even the local villagers refused to set foot inside the temple.

Clark held on as the jeep they were in bounced over potholes and ruts in the road surface. Lin continued.

“There’s a myth that claimed an all-powerful god came from another world and hid a treasure there. Apparently, there was some kind of map to it but it was stolen centuries ago.”

“So, they never found the treasure?” Clark asked, raising his voice to be heard over the creaks and groans of the jeep.

“Not that I know of,” Lin replied. 

The temple looked like any other temple Clark had seen in his studies. There certainly seemed to be nothing to indicate why the locals were so superstitious. As Lin led him into an inner chamber, he finally understood why. There were symbols painted on the temple walls. Symbols which looked Kryptonian to him. 

Lin frowned, turning her head as if listening. Clark tuned in, realising there were voices heading toward them. Someone obviously knew they were here. 

“Stay here,” Lin said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

Clark approached a symbol that looked like a figure eight inside a shield of some kind. It was painted on what appeared to be a door. As he touched the panel, the door began to move in and slide back to one side. Inside the chamber was a Chinese garment with some kind of design. 

The sound of Lin shouting reached him and he was torn between going to help her and trying to solve the mystery of the symbol. Knowing he couldn’t stand by and let someone get hurt, he ran at speed and grabbed the two men in military garb before they could shoot the professor. He then sped back to the chamber, moving closer to the garment. 

As soon as he stepped over the threshold, a green glow emanated from a statue. Clark immediately began to feel the effects of the meteor rock, his stomach roiling with nausea. He fought the waves of dizziness, remembering Bruce’s lessons in overcoming his weakness. He managed to stay upright long enough to get a good look at the image on the garment, then backed off far enough for meteor rock to stop glowing. 

Lin came in. “We should hurry,” she said. “There may be more soldiers coming. What is that?” she asked with a gasp.

“I don’t know,” he said, trying to decipher the image. It looked to him like it was a map of some description, with a river.

“I don’t seem to recall a river around here,” Lin replied when he explained what he saw. She fidgeted. Clark heard the sounds of heavy footsteps. 

“More soldiers?” he asked. 

She nodded. “Whatever the treasure is, many of those who are rich and powerful will kill for it. She led him out of the temple and onto the grounds. Clark paused as they passed a tree. They had trees on the farm which were more than a century old and this tree looked even older than that. He could see the temple between two branches which looked a little like the map.

He suddenly realised it wasn’t a map, but a picture of the temple from the tree. He thought quickly, analysing the background. It seemed odd that whoever had painted the image would do so from the perspective of the tree, unless the stone was actually buried beneath it. He looked down, through the topsoil and saw a small bundle at the foot of the tree, partially hidden by the roots. Lin still looked anxious.

“We must hurry,” she said. 

Clark looked up. Soldiers were emerging from the temple. He dug quickly and picked up the bundle and opened it. The statue hiding the stone was of a horse. 

Lin looked confused. “That’s the treasure?” she asked. “Seems rather a strange thing for men to kill over.”

Clark didn’t want to explain to her what was inside the statue. He pulled her away just as the soldiers began firing on them. 

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. 

He held the statue in his hands on the journey back. Lin cautioned him, telling him someone might still try to take it off him. He nodded. Bruce had already warned him that Lionel was still pursuing the stones and would very likely have paid the soldiers to retrieve the last stone. 

He told Lin to drop him off in the city and he would make his own way back to the airport and Bruce’s plane. The last thing he wanted was for her to get caught with him, or to reveal his powers to her. He worried the Chinese Army would come after her but she refused any offers of help. 

Clark sped back to the plane and hid the statue well out of sight. Predictably, an airport security team refused to let the plane take off until they’d searched the entire aircraft and its crew, as well as Clark himself. Clark smirked as the men began their search, taking pleasure in moving at superspeed to shift the statue when it looked like the soldiers were close to finding it. 

Not having found what they were searching for, the men left the plane and let it go, knowing they could face serious questions from the US government if they didn’t. Clark was relieved to return to home soil. 

Bruce and Alfred met him at the airport. “Lin told me about the soldiers. She’s okay,” he added, reassuringly. “She’s on her way back to Princeton.”

“That’s good. I really thought the Chinese government might do something to hurt her.”

“She has American citizenship, thanks to her father. Put it this way, the American government, not to mention the board at Princeton would have some pretty nasty words with the Chinese government if anything did happen to her. Did you get the stone?”

Clark nodded, waiting until they got into the limousine before he opened the silken-wrapped bundle. Bruce looked puzzled.

“A horse? Is that supposed to have any kind of significance?”

“I don’t know. I mean, the one in Egypt did come from a statue of Anubis and he’s the Egyptian god of the afterlife. When my birth father, Jor-El told me about the stones, he said there were three. The Crystal of Air, the Crystal of Water and the Crystal of Fire.”

“Which is relevant to Anubis how?”

“Well, fire can mean renewal and Anubis is about the afterlife.”

“Okay, sort of six degrees of separation. What about the Crystal of Water?”

“That’s the one found in the Mayan temple.” He racked his brain, trying to recall his research into the Mayan culture and link it to the crystal somehow. “I dunno. Other than the fact the crystal was found in the statue of a Mayan rain god, I’ve got nothing.”

“No, I think you’ve got the connection. Water, rain god.” Bruce looked thoughtful as he examined the horse. “You know, the horse is actually very symbolic in Chinese culture.”

“How so?” Clark asked, still confused.

“Well, you look at it. The horse has always been known as man’s best friend. I mean, forget dogs. What else but a horse has taken man over battlefields? A horse has nobility of spirit.”

“So, spirit meaning heaven, meaning air?” He shook his head. “If a Kryptonian placed all these crystals, why did they have to make it so difficult?”

“Well, if we go back to the horse’s meaning in Chinese culture, it’s a symbol for man’s own quest to overcome various trials, or his enemies, or even himself. So, it’s sort of a quest.”

“Great,” Clark replied with a moan. “Just what I need. More tests.”

Bruce smirked at him. “Sorry kid, that’s the way life goes sometimes. Even superheroes have problems.” He reached over to tousle Clark’s hair.

“So what did your father tell you to do with these stones?”

“There’s these caves in Palmer Woods. A couple of years ago this kid was dirt biking with his friend and he fell through a hole in the ground to the caves. Luckily for him, one of the members of the local Native American tribes found him and got him help.”

“A hole?”

“Something to do with an office park Lionel was building in Smallville. It made the ground unstable. Anyway, the leader of the Kawatche tribe told the newspaper they’d been looking for the caves for years but had never been able to find them until then. They were protesting the building of the park.”

He went on to tell his friend that a worker at the construction site had been attacked and killed. Forensics had discovered the man had been bitten by a wolf, which had been strange since wolves hadn’t been seen in Smallville for decades. When Chloe had investigated, she had come up with the theory that the Kawatche could change into animals. It was only after a young Kawatche girl had been found stabbed to death that the attacks stopped. Clark had been sceptical of Chloe’s theory but after he’d done some reading on the tribe’s history he’d wondered if she might have been right after all. 

“So what happened to the caves?”

“You might have to ask Lex for the full story but Lionel did a deal with the state government under the Historic Artifacts Amendment and got them to buy him out of the office park.”

Bruce snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”

They had reached the manor. Bruce got out of the car and pulled Clark with him. 

“I should really get this crystal home,” Clark said. He’d hidden the other two crystals in a safe place until the third could be found. 

“You don’t have to go right away, do you?” Bruce asked. “I missed you.”

Clark bit his lip. He’d missed Bruce too. He missed Lex just as much but there was little they could do about that until Lionel was in prison, where he belonged.

When he returned home, he took the key from its hiding place and went down to the storm cellar.

“I have all three stones,” he told Jor-El when the ship activated.

“Good. You must take them to the chamber in the caves and reunite them.”

“What then?”

“You will understand, my son.”

Clark had to tell his parents what was going on. Both of them were understandably reluctant to trust Jor-El. They had been more than a little uneasy ever since Clark had begun digging more into his heritage. He could understand that, on a deeper level, they were afraid that he would want to leave them behind. It was often the case when an adopted child wanted to seek out their biological family. It didn’t change the way he felt about his parents. If anything, now that he knew just how much of a burden it was having his abilities, he realised exactly what they had taken on when they had taken him in. 

He'd also told Lex, sneaking into his boyfriend’s bedroom at the mansion. Lex had been worried they might be heard so Clark had sped them away to the lake and they’d sat out under the stars, talking about Clark’s discoveries. The older man had been worried but curious, wanting to know all the gory details. 

When Clark left Lex at the mansion, he could tell his boyfriend hated the situation. He looked forward to the day when the three of them could be together without any kind of interference from Lionel. At least Clark’s own parents had come around and were being friendlier. 

He went to the caves, dismayed to find that Lionel had had a team of people studying the paintings on the cave walls. Clark had no idea what the pictographs meant but he wasn’t about to dawdle. Lex had quietly confided in him that Lionel had made him employ security guards to watch the caves. He’d drawn the line at installing surveillance cameras, however.

He used the key to open up the inner chamber as Jor-El had instructed. In the centre of the chamber was a stone table with various inscriptions. Clark didn’t know what they meant but his father had assured him he would learn his native language. There were three symbols he did recognise. They matched each crystal, indicating exactly where to place them. Clark gently fit the crystals, watching as each one glowed and changed colour, from yellow, red and blue to an icy blue as the crystals melded together. It almost looked like a huge diamond. The new crystal rose into the air and hovered, waiting. 

Clark grabbed it and suddenly he was surrounded by a light brighter than he had ever seen. Pain ripped through his body and he screamed, uncaring if anyone heard him. He closed his eyes against the onslaught. It felt like minutes but was probably only seconds when he opened his eyes again to find himself surrounded by white.

He stared around him, not familiar with the geography of the land surrounding him. It was almost as if he had been teleported to some distant planet, only that just didn’t seem possible. 

The diamond-shaped crystal vibrated in his hand and he threw it instinctively, watching as a tall structure rose seemingly out of nowhere. Crystals formed and joined together to create something that resembled two pyramids – both at perpendicular angles to each other. 

Clark walked through the snow to the structure, feeling almost dwarfed by its height. The ground was uneven as he walked beneath the crystal ceiling, or whatever it was. In the centre of the main chamber was a small bank of crystals. One of them flew into the air at his approach and he reached out for it. It was as smooth and cold as ice. 

“Welcome home, my son.”

“Jor-El?”

“Kal-El.”

“What is this place?”

“It is all that is left of your home planet, Kal-El. When you united the stones, they formed a crystal of Knowledge. It is a library, containing all the knowledge of the twenty-eight known galaxies. I used all that was contained therein to create this replica of Krypton so that I may instruct you.”

“What must I do?” Clark asked.

“You must undertake your training, Kal-El, so you may learn to use the abilities given to you by the yellow sun.”

“Training? For what?”

“The people of Earth need someone to guide them. You must rule them with strength, Kal-El.”

“I don’t want to rule over anybody,” he said. “If you mean for me to conquer the people of Earth, then I want nothing to do with it.”

“There are many definitions of the word ‘rule’, my son.”

“I can’t just leave my friends, my family.”

“You must if you are to complete your destiny.”

Clark knew there was no way to argue with Jor-El. He asked how long the training would be but Jor-El wouldn’t give him a straight answer. As the disembodied voice of his long-dead father went on, Clark realised his training would be more than just working inside the crystal fortress, as Jor-El called it. Part of his education in becoming Earth’s saviour was to learn more about humanity. A college education was one thing, but it would not give him the insight he needed to guide the people of Earth. 

“To do what?” he asked. “What am I supposed to be guiding them to?”

“To prevent the same disaster happening on Earth that occurred on Krypton.”

Jor-El explained that thanks to war and environmental disasters, as well as strip mining, long before the destruction of Krypton, he had learnt that the planet was slowly dying. Within twenty years, the planet would no longer be able to sustain life. He had tried to warn the Kryptonian council, even discussing the matter with his best friend, a man named Dru Zod. Jor-El had tried to convince the council elders with science but Zod, frustrated with the elders’ refusal to see reason, had decided to take over the council by force. That had led to much bloodshed. Eventually Zod had been arrested and banished to an inter-dimensional prison. Still the new council elders refused to listen to Jor-El. Saddened by their blindness and arrogance, Jor-El had begun planning a way to send his wife and soon-to-be born son away from the planet.

“Lara would not leave my side, even though I was insistent. So, together, side by side, we built a lifepod. For you, my son. So that you may live and prevent history repeating itself on Earth.”

Clark felt tears rolling down his face. While the voice held no emotion, he could sense the grief and the fear his birth parents had held for him. He would be different, Lara had argued. He was different, but the love of his parents, his grandfather, and Lex and Bruce had taught him that being different was okay. That he could embrace it. 

He bit his lip. “I want to train with you,” he said, “but I need to let my family and my friends know.”

“Very well. I will give you until the time of sunset in Smallville. Tomorrow.”

“Thank you. I promise, I will return.”

He returned to Smallville through the portal in the caves. It was the middle of the night but he didn’t care. He sped to Lex’s mansion and woke him up. Startled, Lex looked at him. Clark put a finger to his lips. 

Lex got out of bed as quietly as possible and dressed. He stepped easily into Clark’s arms and together they sped to Gotham. 

Bruce had only just returned from patrol when they arrived. He stared at them. 

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I only have until sunset tomorrow … uh, today,” Clark said. 

“For what?” Lex asked, frowning.

“To say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” Bruce asked, looking troubled.

“My father … my birth father. He wants to train me to use my abilities to help humans. I don’t know how long the training will be, only that I won’t be able to come back here until it’s complete. I couldn’t go without seeing you. I …”

Lex hugged him and kissed his lips. “We know, Clark. We love you, too. You need to do this, whatever this training is. Bruce and I, we got you so far but Jor-El is the best one to train you now.”

“Lex is right, Clark. Only he can teach you how to make the best of your abilities.”

Clark nodded, his eyes full of tears. He didn’t want to leave them, but knew he had to. 

“You won’t forget me, will you?” he asked.

“Not a chance, farmboy,” Lex replied with a grin. “Now, how about you strip those clothes off. If we’ve only got until sunset, then we better make the most of it.”

Bruce grinned. “What he said.”

Clark laughed and wrapped his arms around his lovers, whipping them at super speed up to Bruce’s room. 

It was the perfect way to say goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> We're slowly getting to the end folks.


End file.
